Bushehr Province Police Commander Brigadier General Khalil Vaezi told reporters in the southwestern port city of Asalouyeh on Saturday, an intelligence-led investigation resulted in the identificationa and destruction of a major drug ring by the anti-narcotic police forces of Bushehr and Hormozgan.

During the operation, he said, the forces seized a vehicle belonging to the drug ring and captured twenty-seven packages of opium, weighing 655 kilograms in total.

Iran, which has a 900-kilometer common border with Afghanistan, has been used as the main conduit for smuggling Afghan drugs to narcotics kingpins in Europe, Tasnim news agency reported on Saturday.

Despite high economic and human costs, the Islamic Republic has been actively fighting drug-trafficking over recent decades.

The country says it has spent more than $700 million on sealing its borders and preventing the transit of narcotics destined for European, Arab and Central Asian countries.

The war on the drug trade which mostly originates from Afghanistan, has claimed the lives of nearly 4,000 Iranian law enforcement officers over the past four decades.